


The Stuff of Legend

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [24]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legends can take many different shapes and forms, from an unbeatable SHIELD team, to a Norse god, to a Time Lord who wanders the universe.  A small, sleepy corner of New Mexico is about to become ground zero for a convergence of all three.  AKA <i>Thor</i> gets the <i>Marvelous Tale</i> treatment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and kudos once again to my marvelous beta, **like-a-raven** , who was up at 3 o'clock in the morning working on this (resulting in some hilarious commentary). She is a legend in her own right!
> 
> This fic was the perfect chance for me to give walk-on roles to Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz, and I had a wonderful time working with their fictional selves. While _Agents of SHIELD_ will not be canon in this universe (because _Marvelous Tale_ was developed before the show was out) I love its characters and am always on the lookout for ways to give them parts to play in this 'verse.
> 
> This fic will be divided into four chapters with one chapter going up per day.
> 
> Happy reading!

_May 2011_  
_New Mexico_

Clint was whistling.

It took Coulson a few moments to place the tune and when he did he rolled his eyes slightly.

 _Just whistle while you work. La dee dee dah dah something something. . ._ Something about brooms and tidying rooms, maybe? Coulson didn’t actually know the words to that song. Clint lightly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he whistled, keeping time. The soft clank of sensor arrays and computer equipment in the back of the van provided a not-unpleasant counterpoint.

Their van was leading a convoy of SHIELD vehicles out of the small town of Puente Antiguo, which might actually win the prize for the sleepiest corner of the continental United States that Coulson had ever visited. The place was little more than a dusty crossroads that, judging by the architecture, had clearly seen its heyday in the 1960s. It was an unlikely place to find what might prove to be the most significant scientific discovery by SHIELD in the last quarter century.

It was also a highly unlikely place to find an astrophysics laboratory. And yet.

“So, what do you think?” Clint said, laying off the musical review for a moment. “A scientist with a wormhole obsession sets up shop fifty miles from our 0-8-4. Coincidence?”

Clearly, they had bought tickets on the same train of thought.

“It could easily be,” Coulson replied. “Dr. Foster’s lab here predates the appearance of the 0-8-4 by eight months. I think it’s highly unlikely she did anything to cause its appearance. It’s possible that she predicted it. Personally, I think she lucked into being in the right place at the right time.”

“So we’re going with coincidence,” Clint said, turning the van west on the cracked, two-lane highway.

“They do occasionally happen,” Coulson said.

Besides, Coulson hadn’t gotten the impression that Foster was trying to hide anything. She would have to be a very good actress to have faked the earnest indignation she’d displayed when SHIELD had confiscated her equipment and data. 

If any evidence proved otherwise, they’d take it up with her in an interrogation room.

Coulson shifted in the passenger seat, making himself comfortable for the drive out to the mobile field base SHIELD had put up on the site. Outside the tinted windows the landscape rolled by in a sweep of barren, rocky ground and scrub brush. It was quiet and peaceful, especially in comparison to babysitting Tony Stark in Malibu. Coulson rested his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes.

After a few minutes, Clint started whistling again, a slower and softer tune this time.

_My love is like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June. My love is like a melody that’s sweetly played in tune. . ._

Coulson smiled a little. That was River’s song, one that she’d learned a long time ago as a little girl in Scotland. It was the song that she always went around humming when she was especially happy. Coming from Clint it meant that he had his partner on the brain (which usually translated to Clint being especially happy).

“She’ll probably be there by the time we get back,” Coulson said. 

“I’m counting on it,” Clint replied.

*****

Clint Barton had grown up (more or less) in a traveling circus. It was nothing new to him to see a patch of countryside go from empty space to the equivalent of a small, bustling town in a matter of hours. But no one did it quite like SHIELD.

He and Coulson had only been gone for about three hours, but Clint could swear that Camp 201-Alpha had doubled in size since they’d left. A square tower made from steel rebar and opaque plastic sheeting rose from the center and tunnels spiraled off of its base, leading to various operational areas. The rest of the camp consisted mostly of trailers, trucks, and modular units. Temporary living quarters in the form of canvas tents had been set up in neat rows along the camp’s western perimeter, built up on pallets in an attempt to keep snakes, scorpions, and spiders at bay.

“Looks like they got the perimeter fencing finished,” Clint said as the guards waved their convoy through the gate. 

Coulson grunted. “I had kind of hoped we’d be in and out of here before a fence became necessary,” he replied.

Clint nodded in silent agreement. Ordinarily, SHIELD wouldn’t have bothered to set up anything this elaborate. Building what amounted to a base an hour from a small town was bound to invite interest that SHIELD didn’t want. The original plan had been to load the 0-8-4 into a secure containment receptacle and transported it to a SHIELD lab for study. 

That was still the plan, but this 0-8-4 was proving to be a little uncooperative.

Clint pulled the van around behind the lab area and grinned when he saw who was waiting for them by the makeshift loading dock. He’d know that figure (in every sense of the word) anywhere.

“There she is.”

Talon had arrived. The band was officially back together.

River’s assignment to shadow and assess Tony Stark had wrapped. It had ended with a bang, that was for sure. The attack on Queens had streamed live over the camp’s satellite feed, and Clint and Coulson had had a tense hour before a text had come through on Clint’s phone: _I’m fine. Don’t fuss. Details later._

Quintessential River Song, right there.

“Did you boys have fun in town?” River asked as they got out of the van.

“Eh, you know. Screaming civilians,” Clint said. “Phil got threatened with legal action for violating someone’s constitutional rights again.”

God, it was good to have River here. Clint kind of wanted to pick her up and hug her the way he’d done at the airport in New York, when they’d been putting on a show for Pepper Potts. Unfortunately, they were on the clock and among coworkers right now. The fact that Hawkeye and Talon were long-time “partners” might be the worst kept secret in SHIELD, but no need to fuel the gossip.

Instead Clint settled for tweaking the bill of the ball cap she was wearing. (River had this thing about trying to keep her freckle count under control, which Clint confessed he didn’t get.) River grinned at him.

“Poor Phil,” she said as Coulson came around the side of the van to join them. “Verbally abused in the line of duty.”

“Dr. Foster was rather irate,” Coulson confirmed. “Hopefully her data will help shed some light on our 0-8-4. Hi, River.”

A small crowd of agents and techs had already moved in to start unloading Foster’s equipment. Clint, River, and Coulson moved off out of the way, heading for the command center. 

“I dropped my bag in your tent,” River told Clint. “Since I’m technically here as a volunteer and space seems to be at a premium, I didn’t want to make the quartermaster find me my own.”

“Fine by me,” Clint replied. It would be far from the first time he and River had shared tight quarters. It wouldn’t even be the first time they’d doubled-up on a camp bed. 

He’d missed her. He could deal some extra-closeness.

“With any luck, we won’t be camping out for very long,” Coulson said. “We’ll be packing up as soon as the scientists find a way around our 0-8-4’s current mobility problem.”

“Yes, what exactly is the issue there?” River asked.

“Oh, step right this way.” Clint tipped his head toward one of the round, plastic-covered tunnels that led to the heart of the central tower. “You’ll have to see this to believe it.”

*****

The 0-8-4 had left a sizable crater in the desert landscape, putting to rest any question as to how it had arrived. _Fell from orbit_ was really the only thing that could have caused that particular pattern of damage. River had had a good view of from the supply jet when they’d been on approach. Even though it was now largely swarmed over by SHIELD buildings and equipment, it had been quite a sight.

The object itself lay where it had originally landed, though someone had drawn the job of digging out around it so that it sat atop a rough dirt pillar at waist height.

“Well. There’s something you don’t see every day,” River said. 

_Object. 0-8-4._ They were such safe and neutral terms, River thought. Clint hadn’t tried to describe it to her over the phone (that would have been a breach of security protocols). Of course, anyone who might have been eavesdropping would probably have assumed that _giant, medieval war hammer_ was code for something.

River squatted down so that the hammer was at eye level. Archaeology wasn’t her field, but it looked archaic. It certainly didn’t appear to be an example of advanced technology. (Of course, neither did a police call box, so appearances could be deceiving.)

“The decorative etching looks Celtic,” she added. When you grew up in Scotland, you knew your ancient British motifs. “I assume the pattern is being analyzed?”

“As we speak,” Coulson said. “It’s a long shot that it will be of any significance, but I’ll take any long shot that might yield useful information at this point.”

Coulson’s arms were folded and he was looking at the hammer like he just wished the damn thing would behave already. Clint, on the other hand, was grinning with anticipation.

“Go ahead,” Clint said to her. “Try it.”

River glanced to Coulson who gave her a _go for it_ nod. She straightened back up again and, feeling a bit like she was about to reenact a scene from a T.H. White novel, grasped the hammer’s handle and gave it a pull. Then she gave it a firmer one. Then, just for the sake of experimentation, she gripped with both hands and rocked back on her heels, pulling with her entire body weight.

“Huh.”

The hammer might _look_ like it was precariously situated on top of its improvised pedestal, but it felt like it was anchored to the bedrock.

“It’s thoroughly and completely unmovable,” Coulson added. “Before we got the site secured, some of the locals even tried dragging it with a truck. Without success.”

“I imagine that was entertaining to watch. So,” River said conversationally, “we’re thinking alien?”

River knew that SHIELD had tentatively classified this as a Code Pandora before Clint and Coulson had even made it to the site. Encounters with people or objects of extraterrestrial origin were a rarity, but hardly unheard of, especially for the three of them.

They ran with a Time Lord, for pity’s sake. River, Clint, and Coulson were practically blasé about alien encounters at this point.

“According to the preliminary scans, yes,” Coulson replied. “In fact, it’s giving off an energy reading similar to that of the Tesseract.”

 _That_ made River raise an eyebrow. The Tesseract was arguably the most valuable item in SHIELD’s extensive vaults. It was an alien artifact, one that had been weaponized by Hydra during the Second World War. Howard Stark, one of SHIELD’s founders, had recovered it after the war and it had been in SHIELD’s hands ever since. Even after almost seventy years it was still largely an enigma. All they were really sure of was that it was a source of immense power.

Even the Doctor had been. . .not _impressed_ exactly. More like slightly appalled that SHIELD was in possession of it.

“Asgardian.” Clint shook his head with a wry smile. “I’ll bet you ten bucks the Doctor shows up.”

“One problem at a time,” Coulson said.

“Doctor who?” a curious voice asked.

River leaned to the side so that she could see the young woman in a lab coat who had come up behind Coulson. She must be one of the junior scientists, no one that River recognized. And River would lay odds that it was her first big field operation, judging by the general width of her eyes. She was clutching a clipboard and, when the collective attention of Strike Team Delta turned on her, a blush started to rise in her cheeks.

“Was there something you needed, Agent Simmons?” Coulson asked.

River didn’t know if it was just the general excitement of the situation or if basic social situations simply weren’t Simmons’s forte, but the scientist just continued to stare mutely. Her blush intensified by a few shades of red.

“Agent Simmons?” Coulson repeated with a tinge of impatience in his voice.

“Yes, sir.” Simmons cleared her throat and held out her clipboard. “Agent Jankovic needs you to sign off on these requisitions.”

Coulson obligingly scribbled his signature on the forms, and Agent Simmons quickly retreated to the upper platform inside the tower where members of the science team were working. Coulson shook his head as he watched her go.

“We definitely need to get this thing to a secure lab as soon as possible.”

*****

From the platform, Jemma Simmons stole another peek down at agents below.

“Can you believe it?” she said. “Hawkeye _and_ Talon are here. And Agent Coulson as well. Strike Team Delta.” When her companion just made a grumbling sort of noise under his breath, Simmons rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. They’re _legends_.”

 _Hawkeye_ and _Talon_ were names that were spoken in hushed whispers at SHIELD. They were the elite. And she’d just gotten horribly tongue-tied in front of them. Fortunately for Simmons, embarrassment was generally a fleeting emotion.

“They’re _assassins_ ,” Fitz replied. He didn’t sound at all happy. “What are assassins doing on a science op? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“They’re probably just here to protect the 0-8-4,” Simmons reasoned. 

Presumably they were also here to protect the scientists, just in case some enemy agency or organization tried to come in and take the object. Really, it made Simmons feel quite good to know that their security was being taken so seriously.

She didn’t voice those thoughts aloud, though. Fitz was anxious enough about being out in the field. 

Strike Team Delta was still below, standing around the 0-8-4, but at a gesture from Agent Coulson, they began to move toward the exit. Simmons smiled as she watched Agent Barton quickly reach over and clasp Agent Song’s hand for a second.

“It’s really quite romantic, isn’t it?” she said. “Two enemy operatives who wind up fighting for the same side, and then they fall in love?”

“And then everybody dies. Very Shakespearean.” Fitz looked up from the circuit panel he was working on with a concerned frown. “Hey, you don’t suppose Agent Barton knows about. . .well, that thing? You know, at the Christmas party back when Agent Song was a trainee?”

“You mean when she shagged you in a supply closet once five years ago?” Simmons asked. She knew she was doing a dreadful job hiding her amusement. “Well, they say he sees everything so, yes, probably.”

That had been the biggest physical risk Simmons had ever known Fitz to take. After she’d gotten over being aghast, she’d had no end of fun giving him a hard time over it. 

She was his best friend. It was practically a moral obligation.

“Great.” Fitz blanched.

“Oh, Fitz, no one is going to care about one ten-minute encounter that happened ages ago. They weren’t even a thing back then.” Simmons patted his back comfortingly. “I doubt she even remembers it.”

“More like fifteen minutes.” The slight indignation in Fitz’s voice was tempered by his look of relief. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.”

“Come on,” Simmons said. “I need to take these forms back to Jankovic, and then they want our help running some tests on the 0-8-4’s sonic field. That might be a key to moving it.”

“And we can get back to working on a proper lab,” Fitz said, following along behind her. “That can’t happen soon enough for me.”

*****

The next stop on the _Land of Enchantment Tour_ was the mess trailer for lunch. The trailers always reminded Clint of grabbing a meal from one of the food trucks at Carson’s Carnival. Sadly, SHIELD didn’t spring for funnel cakes.

Clint, Coulson, and River collected their food and passed by the crowded tables under the large, open-sided tent. Instead they migrated to an out-of-the-way area, sitting on crates in a relatively sheltered corner formed by two equipment trailers.

“So, what do you think Asgard’s deal is, anyway?” Clint said, frowning as he tried to keep his napkins from blowing off into the desert.

“What do you mean?” Coulson asked a little absently. Clint’s S.O. was concentrating hard on trying to cut up his chicken with plastic utensils while keeping the Styrofoam box balanced on his knees. 

“I mean, who exactly are these people?” Clint held out his own box so that River could pass him her pickles. “And how does their shit keep winding up on Earth? Is this place a designated dumping ground for them or something?

Asgardians. Litterbugs of the Universe.

“I don’t know. It seems like the Tesseract would have been a strange thing for them to ‘dump’ here,” River said. “Just given the way the Doctor went on about it, it sounds like the Tesseract was something of great importance, not something that they would have carelessly lost.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Clint said. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Maybe they’re not losing things. Maybe they’re storing them here. It’s not like we know what to do with this stuff other than stick it away in a vault somewhere. Maybe the Asgardians are using Earth to hide things from someone.”

Shit, that had some creepy implications, didn’t it? If aliens were stockpiling stuff here, that indicated that they’d come back for it at some point. Or someone else was going to come looking.

“That’s a cheery thought.” Trust River to agree with thought processes that Clint hadn’t even voiced aloud.

“But a logical one,” Coulson said. “The next time we see the Doctor, we should ask him some specific questions about Asgard, see what sort of intel he’d be willing to share with us. Just to be on the safe side.”

“Hell, maybe we could arrange a visit,” Clint said.

They did know a little about Asgard thanks to the Doctor, but Clint wasn’t sure if it could be considered useful intel. It was a monarchy of some sort. The Doctor had mentioned a king and a queen, and there were a couple of princes in the picture if Clint was remembering right. They liked to roast oxen and it was a good place to picnic.

That was about all they had to go on.

“So, what’s the plan for dealing with the 0-8-4?” River asked. “SHIELD can’t leave a camp set up here indefinitely. It would be impossible to secure it long-term.”

“No,” Coulson said. “And the people out in Puente Antiguo are only going to keep their distance for so long. We’re the most interesting thing for a hundred mile radius. It’s only a matter of time before the curiosity seekers start causing problems.”

“Not to mention anyone else who might want to try to get their hands on it,” Clint added grimly.

Even if they had no idea what the 0-8-4 was or what it was capable of, SHIELD wouldn’t be the only group to want to contain it.

“So, we just need to figure out how to move an immovable object,” River said.

“The scientists are working on it,” Coulson said. “They have some ideas about trying to reverse the object’s polarity that I didn’t quite follow. If that doesn’t work and time becomes an issue, I’m in favor of digging it up and moving it, ground and all.”

“Phil’s personally going to operate the backhoe,” Clint said, and batted away the balled-up napkin that Coulson tossed at his head.

“I will it if comes to that,” Coulson said.

*****

The remainder of the day passed quietly. No unauthorized visitors came near the camp; no local law enforcement, no curious sight-seers, no reporters, no astrophysicists with lawyers in tow. Coulson made routine passes through the command center to check for updates, but the staff had little to report. Agent Sitwell, who was overseeing the redirection of air traffic, was arguably the busiest person in the place.

Clint and River called it a very early night. River begged exhaustion, which Coulson could well believe, given the way the Stark mission had wrapped. She and Clint bid Coulson good night as soon as dinner was over.

Coulson tactfully pretended to be deaf and blind when River said something aside to Clint about “having an early birthday present” for him back at their tent, which caused Clint to waggle his eyebrows suggestively.

Kids.

Coulson went to check in with the science team. 

“We’ve been going through Dr. Foster’s research,” Agent Jankovic said, leading Coulson down a row of tables covered with Foster’s jury-rigged devices. “I have to say, her work is impressive. Why she’s stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with one unqualified assistant and no real lab is beyond me.”

“Is there anything that sheds any light on our 0-8-4?” Coulson asked. 

“Yes and no,” Jankovic said. “We haven’t turned up anything that can help us solve the mobility issue yet, but we may have gained some insight into how the 0-8-4 got here in the first place. Dr. Foster’s main area of research is the theory of the Einstein-Rosen bridge. Basically what that means is--”

“It’s a wormhole,” Coulson said. “A bridge that creates a shortcut between two distant points of space-time.”

You didn’t run with the Doctor without picking up a few things.

“Er. Yes.” Jankovic blinked, but quickly collected himself again. “Using Dr. Foster’s findings we went back and looked at the readings from the original atmospheric disturbance that SHIELD picked up, and we found something very exciting.”

Dr. Jankovic waved Coulson over to a large monitor and pulled up an animated computer model. It was playing on a loop, showing what seemed to be a beam of energy manifesting in the atmosphere and striking the ground.

“This is the original phenomenon?” Coulson asked.

“It is,” Jankovic confirmed. “This is what touched down right where we’re standing. By applying Dr. Foster’s research, though, we were able to fine tune the readings and we got this.”

Jankovic tapped the console, and a new animated model came up. Coulson watched again as the energy built up in the atmosphere. This time though, something was different.

Coulson leaned closer to the screen as the model looped again. There was the beam of energy. And there, narrower, touching down on the other side of Puente Antiguo, was a second beam.

“How the hell did we miss that?” Coulson said.

“They came right on top of each other,” Jankovic replied. “Within seconds. The satellite only registered the stronger of the two. The second one touched down twenty miles on the eastern side of the town. Now, there’s a chance that it was just residual energy from the main pulse, but--”

“But it might have been a separate incident altogether,” Coulson said. “Get the exact coordinates. I want a team out there as soon as possible. If we have another 0-8-4 on the ground, it needs to be secured yesterday.”

*****

River and Clint had turned up for breakfast the next morning just in time to see Coulson rolling in from a late night excursion in the desert with half a dozen response team members.

“And you didn’t think to come get us?” was Clint’s first question upon hearing where they had been.

“I wanted you two fresh for today,” Coulson said, stirring his coffee. “Besides, the likelihood wasn’t exactly high that there would be anything there to fight.”

“This is all you found?” River asked. She was scrolling through pictures on the tablet Coulson had handed her. “No crater this time?”

“Just that,” Coulson said. “No crater and no 0-8-4. At least, if there was one, it’s gone now.”

Clint leaned over River’s shoulder as she went through the pictures. 

“It looks like a big Celtic crop circle,” he said. “Minus the crops.”

River nodded. The round, knotted pattern was a good fifteen feet across, and it looked like it had been burned into the ground. “Had the area been disturbed?” she asked Coulson.

“There were tire tracks and footprints in the area, but they seem to be several days old,” Coulson said. “It’s possible that they were there before that thing appeared.”

Clint settled back into his seat. “What the hell?”

“You don’t think it’s like Jankovic said, do you?” River asked. “You don’t think it was just residual energy?”

“Do you?” Coulson asked.

River looked back at the large, intricate pattern swirling across the desert soil. “Not for a bloody second.”


	2. Chapter 2

“So, what do you think is out there?” Clint asked.

“Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night?” River replied. “Or possibly just an Asgardian spanner or screwdriver. It’s hard to say.”

Clint snorted softly in amusement. 

He and River were up in the crow’s nest, a small metal basket suspended on a cable high over the camp. They had come up for some privacy and to keep watch. The sun was now setting on another slow day. The excitement of finding the second site had been confined largely to the science team. For security, it was just another area that needed to be secured. A couple of lucky agents had been posted out there, hiding in the rocks with binoculars just in case _something_ happened. 

Here at the main camp, the situation was unchanged. It wasn’t that Clint was hoping that trouble would come knocking at their gates, but he was itching for something to do other than watch the science teams geeking out over the 0-8-4.

“It’s a bad week for hammers,” Clint said, gently rocking the basket. When River glanced over at him, he added, “You were dealing the Justin Hammer in New York. We have a weird hammer that we can’t move. If a guy in balloon pants shows up, I’m out of here.”

“Weirdo,” River said fondly. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

“Yeah.” Clint’s eyes scanned the horizon. “Hey, check it out. Storm’s coming,” he added, nodding to the east.

Darkness was rolling in and, here and there, a flash of lightning marked the edges of the clouds in stark relief. Clint could hear a low growl of thunder in the distance.

“That looks like it’s going to be ugly once it gets here,” River said. “We’d better go tell Coulson to batten down the hatches.”

*****

Coulson glanced up when the first raindrops began to rattle on the metal roof of the command center. He heard Agent Finch, who was manning one of the surveillance stations, make a frustrated noise.

“Problem?” Coulson asked.

Finch shook her head. “We’re just getting some additional interference from the storm,” she said. “We’ve been dealing with low level electro-magnetic pulses coming off the 0-8-4 since we set up, but the weather seems to be exacerbating it. It’s nothing we can’t compensate for, sir. It’s just. . .” Finch made a face and adjusted some settings. “Inconvenient.” 

Coulson nodded. Even the most solid field bases didn’t mix especially well with inclement weather. Judging by the drumming Coulson could now hear on the roof, the camp was going to be a sloppy, muddy mess by morning.

“Get on the horn to Jankovic,” Coulson told Finch, “and make sure that the science team gets under cover until this blows over. I know they’re enthusiastic, but I’d rather no one got electrocuted.”

The paperwork would be a bitch.

Coulson moved through the command center to where Agent Sitwell was overseeing the base’s security systems. The command center was open to the outside here and Coulson could see the rain beating down. Clint and River were standing just under the eave. 

“Anything to report?” Coulson asked, stepping down to join them.

“It’s wet,” Clint replied sounding slightly irritated. He was worrying at his right ear. “And this comm is driving me nuts. What’s with all the interference?”

“Finch is working on it,” Coulson said. The downside of Clint’s hearing aids was that he always got more comm static than anyone else.

“You could just take it out for a while,” River said. 

“You could,” Coulson agreed. “I’d say something about how it’s going to be a quiet night and you won’t likely need it, but--”

But apparently the universe decided that he needed a refresher in never saying things like that, because a klaxon alarm suddenly blared, drowning out the sound of the storm.

“Except that that would jinx the whole damn night?” River shouted over the noise.

Someone at the security station dialed down the volume on the alarms so that they could actually hear the voice coming over the comms.

“Agents down! We have agents down at the south perimeter!”

*****

“I’m pretty sure we’re now in violation of orders,” Simmons said.

“I think that _go inside_ was more of a general suggestion,” Fitz replied.

The rest of the science team had sought shelter indoors, down in the lab area, but Fitz had picked up some odd readings that he wanted to take a closer look at. He squatted in the increasingly slippery mud next to the 0-8-4 and adjusted a few dials on his scanner.

“What is it?” Simmons asked. She was standing at his shoulder, bending awkwardly to try to see the readings, holding her clipboard over her head to try to block the rain.

“Some sort of weird, electro-magnetic pulse,” Fitz replied. “I can’t tell what might be causing it, though. All our readings say that the hammer head is solid, there’s nothing mechanical going on inside. It doesn’t have a defined energy source. So what the hell. . .?”

Fitz jumped, falling onto his backside in the mud, fumbling his scanner, and almost knocking Simmons over when an alarm went off.

“Oh, Lord. What is that?” Simmons said.

*****

“The south tunnel has been breached.”

Sitwell had taken over the security station and was frantically adjusting settings, trying to get a clearer picture of what was happening. He was only having a minor amount of luck.

“Is this the storm?” Coulson asked, squinting at the staticky, jumping video feed.

“The storm and whatever the hell is coming off of the 0-8-4. There was just a huge jump in interference.” Sitwell smacked the side of the console and for a second they got a clear shot of a mass of shadowy people moving through the tunnels.

“How many intruders are we looking at?”

“There’s a lot of comm chatter,” Sitwell said. “We can confirm one. No idea if there are others.”

Clint and River had followed Coulson inside, awaiting orders. 

“Clint, I need eyes up high.”

Clint nodded and took off, ducking out into the rain, already unfolding his bow. Coulson turned to River.

“I want you in the tower. If anyone is still there, clear them out, then wait for instructions.”

“Yes, sir.”

*****

Clint vaulted into the crow’s nest and hit the controls sending the small basket into the air. Visibility was more or less shit between the rain and the darkness, but, well, he was Hawkeye. It only took him a second to spot the current location of their intruder.

“Aerie, I have a visual,” Clint said. He watched the mass of flailing shadows inside the plastic tunnel as he drew an arrow and nocked it on his bow. “South side, Junction B.”

“Acknowledged,” Coulson replied over the comm. 

Even as he spoke, though, Clint saw a SHIELD agent go flying through the side of the tunnel, landing in a heap in the mud, and their hostile was on the move again.

“Agent down, Aerie. Intruder’s heading straight for the 0-8-4. Do you want me to slow him down?”

Clint had his arrow trained on the shadowy form racing through the tunnel.

“Not yet,” Coulson said. “Get into position over the tower. Talon is moving in on the ground, now.”

*****

Agents Simmons and Fitz flailed with surprise bordering on panic when River arrived in the center of the tower, jumping down to ground level and landing beside them.

Simmons recovered first. “What’s happening?” she shouted over the rain.

“You two need to get out of here.” River grabbed them each by an arm and propelled them toward the tunnel to the lab. “Rejoin your team and stay there.”

“But what about--”

“Now!”

The two scientists scurried, heading for the safety of the lab. River took a second to assess her situation. Even over the pouring rain, she could hear shouting coming from the south tunnel. She touched her earpiece.

“Hawkeye?”

“Right above you,” he replied. River looked up and, sure enough, the crow’s nest was directly over the top of the tower. “The intruder’s heading your way. I’ve got you covered, and Fuller is about to intercept.”

“Acknowledged.” 

That made River the last line of defense. She had already identified the position that would afford her the best advantage. 

When in doubt, head for the high ground.

*****

Clint figured that if anyone could stop their hostile in his tracks, it was Agent Fuller. The man was built like a cross between a grizzly and a boulder.

Apparently, so was the intruder. The tunnel never stood a chance. As Clint watched from overhead, two men crashed through the plastic sheeting, landing in the mud. 

“Shit,” he muttered as he watched Fuller get his ass thoroughly kicked. “Aerie, I have a shot. Do you want me to take it?” 

An arrow to the shoulder or the knee should be enough to bring the man down.

There was no immediate response from Coulson. Clint watched the intruder climb to his feet, leaving Fuller on the ground. He could see Fuller try to roll himself over, though. He was still alive.

Clint gripped his bow a little tighter as the intruder moved to the outer wall of the tower. “Aerie?”

“Not yet.”

Clint nodded in silent compliance, but he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell Coulson was waiting for.

*****

Coulson could feel the disapproval coming off of River.

“Out of curiosity,” she said, “what are you planning to do if he _can_ pick it up?”

They were on the tower’s upper platform watching the intruder, a huge man who looked like he should have _MERCENARY_ tattooed somewhere on his person, approach the 0-8-4. River had been primed to jump the guy from above when Coulson had joined her and ordered her to stand down.

“If he picks it up, Clint will drop him and then we’ll ask him some serious questions,” Coulson replied.

That would probably be the plan even if the man couldn’t pick up the hammer. Given the swath he had just cut through SHIELD’s agents, incapacitating him from a distance seemed to be the safest strategy.

It ultimately proved to be unnecessary.

Coulson watched the intruder approach the 0-8-4 and grasp the handle in a way that looked. . .the best word Coulson could think of was _proprietary._

When he couldn’t move it, his entire demeanor changed.

“I don’t get it,” Clint said quietly over the comm. “Is he just giving up?”

“It looks like,” Coulson said. The intruder had slid to his knees in the mud, head bowed. He didn’t look like he was even going to try to run for it. “Ground units move in, but approach with caution. River, go take point, just in case it’s a ruse.”

If it was a ruse, though, it was one that wasn’t going to play out immediately. The intruder came quietly.

*****

“Do you get the feeling that this guy takes the _strong and silent_ thing a little too seriously?” Clint asked.

He and River were standing outside the interrogation room, watching through the one-way mirror as Coulson interrogated the prisoner. For a man who had torn through their security (nine agents were being patched up by field medics even as they spoke) he was now sitting quietly, not even trying to put up any resistance.

Hell, he was doing a pretty good impersonation of a six-foot-plus kicked puppy. 

“He knows how to keep his own council, that’s for certain,” River replied. 

Clint nodded in agreement. Coulson hadn’t gotten a word out of the guy so far. Neither had River. Coulson had called her in earlier to try to vault over a potential language barrier. A mercenary working in America was probably conversant in English, but addressing a prisoner in his native language could sometimes provoke a response.

Clint and Coulson were both multilingual, but River was the polyglot to beat all polyglots. (It was one of her fairy-godmother gifts, courtesy of the TARDIS.) Going off of the intruder’s physical type, she’d started off in Northern Europe: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish. None had gotten a response. From there she’d moved on to Russian, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Afrikaans. . .

 _What’s your name? Who sent you here? Why were you trying to take the object?_

The most she’d gotten out of him was a few confused looks.

“Agent Barton? Agent Song?”

Agent Finch had come up behind them. She was holding a SHIELD file.

“Hey. Did you find something in the rogue’s gallery?” Clint asked.

One of the first steps in processing the prisoner had been taking his picture so that the analysts could run it through SHIELD’s database of known threats, guns-for-hire, and potential troublemakers to see if there was a match. 

“Not exactly,” Finch said. She handed the file to River. “We didn’t get any hits in the database, but we also checked local information for anything relevant. We found a police report about a man matching the intruder’s description. He was brought in to the county hospital two days ago. When he woke up in the ER he attacked the medical personnel, so they put him under lock-down, but he later disappeared.”

“Clint?” River scanned the file while Finch talked. She stepped closer so that Clint could see the file as well. “Take a look.”

Clint whistled as his eyes jumped to a few interesting bits of information on the first page. “Shit. Good job, Finch.”

“Thank you, Agent Barton.”

Clint pulled out his phone. There wasn’t much that warranted interrupting an interrogation, but he knew that Coulson would want to see this.

*****

The fundamental philosophy of interrogation was that everyone would crack under pressure. The task an interrogator faced was figuring out how to apply that pressure. In a lot of ways it was like solving an equation, figuring out the ratio of angle to force. Find the right angle, the vulnerable point, and it didn’t take much force to cause a break.

So far, the angle on their intruder was eluding Coulson. Nothing he had said had elicited a response of any kind. Some interrogators would give up on _angle_ and focus solely on _force_ at this point. Coulson didn’t want to jump to that just yet, but he wasn’t above alluding to it.

“One way or another, we find out what we need to know. We’re good at that.”

No response. 

Coulson’s phone chirped and he drew it far enough out of his pocket to see a text from Clint.

_New intel. You need to see this._

“Holy shit,” Coulson said as he flipped through the file that had Clint thrust under his nose the moment he’d exited the interrogation room.

“He was found in an area approximately twenty miles east of Puente Antiguo, near where that second energy pulse touched down,” River said unnecessarily. “Take a look at who checked him into the hospital.”

“Dr. Jane Foster.” It looked like their local astrophysicist had held a few things back after all. 

“Yeah, apparently she ran him down with a car and then tasered the shit out of him,” Clint said. “I’m starting to think she let us off easy when we cleared out her lab. But that isn’t even the most interesting part.”

“No?”

“No.” Clint reached over and flipped a few pages in the file. “Foster told the hospital that he gave his name as Thor. He went ballistic when he woke up in the emergency room. It was pretty chaotic, but someone did make a note of this.” Clint pointed to the appropriate section of the page.

 _“How dare you attack the son of Odin?”_ Coulson read.

“Thor? Odin? A giant hammer?” Clint looked from Coulson to River. “Okay, I know I’m not the only one getting the connection here.”

“No, I got it,” Coulson said. “They’re all references to Norse mythology.”

Not that Coulson had a whole lot of time to devote to studying folklore, but Norse mythology was hardly obscure. Besides, Norse and Teutonic myths had figured heavily in Hydra’s history and development, which Coulson had studied as a SHIELD trainee. 

It was no surprise that Clint had caught the connection. Clint had yet to meet the random subject he didn’t enjoy reading up on. It made him a real terror at trivia games. 

“So, it’s possible that we’re just dealing with a delusional man,” Coulson added. “Or it’s possible that _Thor_ is a code name of some kind. . .”

“Or,” River said, “they’re more than just references.”

Coulson remembered what it had felt like to learn the truth about River, that she was deceptively old, had been transported through time, and had a genetic makeup that was not quite human. It had been mind-boggling, and at the same time it had made so much sense. He wondered if they might have found themselves in a similar situation here.

“Look,” Clint said, “I’m not saying we’re dealing with actual gods. That would be stupid. But go with me here for a minute. We’re talking about legends, right? Well, legends are usually rooted in something real. Look at the Doctor. How many legends have we found him turning up in?”

“At last count? 187,” Coulson said. “On Earth.”

“Right,” Clint said. “Hell, look at Rory. The Last Centurion. The story in the books doesn’t exactly match up to the real one, at least not the way he and Amy and the Doctor tell it, but he existed. He was around all that time, guarding the Pandorica. Maybe we’re looking at the same thing here.

“Thanks to the Doctor, we know that the Tesseract is from a Asgard, which, for those of you playing along at home, is the same name as the place where the Norse gods were supposed to hang out,” Clint continued. “In a vacuum I might have thought that was coincidence, but factor in Odin? Thor? Hell, even the hammer which just happens to give off the same kind of energy signature as the Tesseract?”

“And then we have a guy calling himself Thor who came looking for the hammer,” Coulson finished.

“We have to at least consider the possibility that the man and the hammer both came here from Asgard,” River said. “Let’s face it, we’ve seen weirder things.”

That was for sure. Coulson had always considered himself to be a pretty open-minded guy, able to think outside of the box. That had been _before_ he’d gotten mixed up with honest-to-God aliens. His credulity horizons had expanded by leaps and bounds over the last few years. The idea that the guy they currently had in interrogation might be an alien barely give him pause.

Coulson closed the file when Sitwell popped around the corner.

“Sir?” Sitwell said. “We have a new development with the prisoner.”

“I don’t suppose he’s decided he wants to talk?”

“No, sir.” The look on Sitwell’s face might as well have said _You’re never going to believe this._ “He has a visitor.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dr. Selvig’s ploy was so clumsy that it was insulting. It was also pretty damn intriguing.

“Right. He really expects Phil to believe that that Thor is some kind of steroid-juiced astrophysicist named Donald Blake?” Clint said as they watched over the security monitor.

“Thor?” River asked.

“We need to call him something,” Clint replied. “Otherwise it’s just confusing, and the guy sure as hell isn’t a _Donald._ ”

River could tell by the polite smile Coulson was wearing that their handler was thinking the same thing. At the same time, Coulson wasn’t calling Selvig on his bullshit, which meant he had something up his sleeve.

“You realize I’ll need to check this out,” Coulson said, holding up the driver’s license Dr. Selvig had handed him.

Selvig gulped so hard River could see it over the feed.

A few seconds later, Coulson came around to the security station to join River and Clint.

“What are you up to, Phil?” River asked.

Coulson was thoughtfully twirling the ID in his fingers. 

“I want you two to go change into civilian clothes,” he said. “Wear whatever you have that won’t stand out in town. Be ready to go in twenty minutes. And I need to see Agent Simmons and Agent Fitz.”

*****

“Why are we doing this again?” Fitz asked as he and Simmons hastily laid out bits and pieces of Dr. Foster’s equipment on a pair of long tables.

The tables had been set up outside under one of the awnings that stretched off of the command center. It was a totally inappropriate place to store scientific equipment, out in the open like this. Granted, these were all smaller items that Agent Jankovic had determined could be returned to Foster, but still.

“Agent Coulson’s orders, but I have no idea why. He just wants us to pretend to be working and to keep an eye on what the two men from town do when they’re allowed to leave.” Simmons held up one item. “The book? Dr. Foster’s notes?”

“Yeah, it can go. We scanned the contents,” Fitz said. He tossed aside the box he’d just emptied. “There, that looks work-like, you think?”

“Good enough,” Simmons replied. “Get your lab coat. It’s almost time.”

*****

“Do you think Foster and Selvig have any idea what they’re dealing with?” Clint asked.

He and River sat in Coulson’s rental car, parked alongside the main road just above the dirt drive that led down to the camp.

“Possibly,” River said as they kept their eye on the bright outpost in the middle of the dark desert. “Selvig took a hell of a risk coming out here to get him back.” That falsified ID wouldn’t have fooled a half-blind barkeep. “By all rights, he should be in custody, too. That suggests he had a very compelling reason to do so.”

“So, either they know or suspect alien origin and want a piece of the action, or they hit the guy with a car and then got sentimental about him,” Clint finished.

“I’d wager the former. Conclusive proof that an alien fell to Earth through a wormhole? I don’t know of any scientist who would be able to resist that.” River sat up a little straighter in the passenger seat. She’d just spotted headlights on the dirt road, heading away from the camp. “I think we have movement.”

Clint waited until Selvig’s car had turned onto the main road and gained a bit of distance before he started the car and turned on the headlights. There was no real chance of losing their quarry out here. The road was deserted. 

“If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll head someplace with decent food,” Clint said.

Keeping Selvig’s taillights in distant view, they headed into town.

*****

“You clearly put your wish in with the right person,” River said as the waitress set two plates laden with hamburgers and thick French fries on their table.

Selvig had driven straight past Foster’s lab and pulled into the parking lot of Kearny’s Bar, which appeared to be Puente Antiguo’s sole source of entertainment after sundown. It was Clint’s sort of place; not upscale, but not skuzzy. There was a bar, a decent menu, pool tables, a small dance floor, and a jukebox. 

Clint reached for the ketchup, keeping a covert eye on their marks. Selvig and Thor were at the bar, and for a pair that had just managed to evade arrest and federal charges, they looked less than celebratory. Clint watched as the bartender sat two large drinks in front of the men. 

“I’ll bet you Thor drinks Selvig under the table,” Clint said.

“Hardly a bet, but you’re on,” River replied. “I wish we could hear what they were talking about. Do you think one of us should do a quick pass?”

“I’ll do it. Thor’s seen you.”

There was a good chance that, in the dim lighting, he wouldn’t recognize the woman who had helped interrogate him. That River had been in uniform, her bearing pure military, her hair braided back and pinned up. For going incognito, River was in jeans and a pink shirt, her hair down and loose. No point in taking the risk when there were two of them on the job, though.

Clint went to the bar, leaning on it a few feet away from Selvig. He asked the bartender for some malt vinegar, the most obscure thing he could think of off the top of his head. The poor guy looked confused and disappeared back into the kitchen for almost a full three minutes before coming out again and shaking his head.

“Hear anything good?” River asked as he resumed his seat. 

“Thor seems to be in the middle of an existential crisis and Selvig wants him to stay away from Foster.”

“Drama and pathos.” River shook her head. “This night just gets more entertaining.”

*****

No one wound up under a table, but Thor did seem to hold his liquor considerably better than Selvig.

The two men lingered at the bar long enough for Clint and River to get through pie and coffee. When they finally got up to leave, Selvig was decidedly unsteady on his feet, but he at least seemed to retain enough sense not to drive. They left Selvig’s car in the parking lot. Clint and River followed on foot as the men wandered down the street. They stayed on the opposite side, walking arm-in-arm, an ordinary couple out for a stroll on a spring night.

“They’re singing,” River said.

“Yes, they are,” Clint replied.

By the time they reached Foster’s lab, Thor was carrying Selvig over his shoulder. He toted him around to the back where Foster’s camper was parked. Clint and River watched from the shadows as Foster let them in.

Foster and Thor left again a few minutes later, climbing up to the roof of the lab. Clint and River started looking for easily accessible fire escapes until they found a good vantage point on the roof of the building across the street.

“I take back what I said before,” River said as they watched Thor and Foster who were sitting on battered patio furniture next to a rooftop campfire.

“What’s that?” Clint asked, bundling up a little tighter in his jacket. It might be May, but the desert night was chilly. 

“It’s not scientific bragging rights, at least not on her part.” River tilted her head, watching the pair. “It’s sentiment.”

Body language didn’t lie. Foster tucked her hair behind her ear for the seventh time as she scooted closer to Thor on the lounger. They were looking at something in the book SHIELD had pretended that they hadn’t seen Thor swipe on his way out of the camp.

River heard a faint click in her ear as her comm came on. “Status report,” Coulson said.

“We’re watching the world’s lamest make-out session,” Clint replied.

“Come again?”

“Foster and Thor are still on the roof, talking,” River said. “No real action. You should go to bed, Aerie. It’s past midnight.”

“I’m fine.” The words had the distinctive half-swallowed sound that said Coulson was talking around a yawn. “This takes precedence.”

“Action.” Clint snorted. “I was getting more action than this when I was fourteen.” When River raised an eyebrow at him, he shrugged. “What, you weren’t?”

“Which time?” River asked. Really, thanks to regeneration, she had a few randy teenage phases to choose from.

“Hell.” Clint grinned at River and winked. “I bet _Phil_ was getting more action than this when he was fourteen. Phil?” he said when Coulson didn’t immediately respond.

“Let’s focus on the job, kids,” Coulson said.

“Or forget fourteen. Now we have the lady friend in Arlington,” Clint said. “Valerie? That is her name, right?”

That was about as much as River and Clint knew about Arlington. Valerie had been Coulson’s girlfriend in college, and they had had an old-friends-with-very-liberal-benefits arrangement for quite some time now. She was originally from Richmond, she was a dog person, and at least at one point she’d worked for the Library of Congress.

River supposed that she and Clint could always go digging for more intel. They _were_ spies. Coulson clearly liked to keep that part of his life private, though, so they never did more than intermittently tease him for information.

“When are we ever going to get to meet this woman, anyway?” Clint asked.

“Hawkeye.” Coulson had gone from sleepy to exasperated. “Words cannot express how much I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“I bet she could tell us some stories. Action stories, even.”

“You have no idea, kid.”

River hadn’t known it was possible to crow with triumph at a low enough volume that unsuspecting civilians fifty feet away couldn’t hear it, but Clint managed.

“Okay, you know what?” Coulson said. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I will go to bed. Sitwell can take over on this end.”

“Was it something I said?” Clint asked.

“You’re a pain in the ass.” _But you’re basically family, so I put up with you,_ was the unspoken follow-up. River and Clint heard that tone from Coulson a lot. “Happy birthday, by the way.” 

Clint checked his watch, verifying what River’s internal clock and calendar had already noted an hour and ten minutes ago. It was Friday, the thirteenth of May. Clint’s birthday.

“Good night, Phil,” River said. When Coulson’s comm dropped out, River rolled her eyes at Clint. “Did you have fun?”

“He’ll thank me for that when he’s rested tomorrow,” Clint said. He shuffled himself into a slightly more comfortable position. “One of us might as well get some sleep tonight.”

*****

The change of guard arrived about an hour before dawn in the form of Agents Smith and Jones.

“Have they been up here all night?” Jones asked, looking over at the two figures on the opposite roof. Foster and Thor were out for the count, curled up on separate lounge chairs.

“Pretty much,” Clint said, stretching out his arms. “Selvig’s in the camper sleeping off a bender. I have no idea where the other one is. The intern.”

“Darcy Lewis? She has some sort of long-term rental arrangement at the motel two streets over,” Smith said. “Intel says that she spends most of her waking hours hanging out at the lab, so she’ll probably be over in the morning.”

Relieved of their watch, Clint and River collected their car from Kearny’s and headed back to camp.

“I can’t decide whether I want to eat or collapse,” Clint said as they dragged their way back to their shared tent. His stomach was starting to rumble. Dinner was pretty far behind them now. On the other hand, the thought of faceplanting onto his cot was pretty damned attractive.

Curling up on it with River was even more so.

River was smothering a yawn. She patted Clint’s back with her other hand. 

“You go collapse,” she said. “I’ll raid the mess trailer and see if they have anything quick.” When Clint opened his mouth to protest, she gave him a firmer push with a mock-stern look. “Go on. It’ll take me five minutes.”

Clint smiled gratefully and continued on to their tent. He lifted up the flap, yawning widely. . .

. . .and promptly got hit in the face with a blast of confetti.

“What the fu--” 

Clint’s hand automatically went for his gun before he registered that he was not, in fact, under attack, but for a second he was too busy trying to spit out bits of paper to process much else. It was a good thing he didn’t shoot, considering the source of the festive ambush.

“Surprise!” the Doctor said.

The Time Lord was beaming broadly, arms spread wide, a party hat sitting askew on his head. Amy and Rory were standing behind him, looking apologetic. And behind _them_. . .Clint shook his head slightly. A table had been brought in, and on it was a large, multi-tiered cake covered in bright bulls-eye targets and riddled with what appeared to be spun sugar arrows.

“What?” Clint pinched one final piece of confetti off of his tongue. “The _fuck?_ ”

“We just happened to be in the neighborhood and noticed that it was your birthday.” The Doctor didn’t look even remotely repentant. “So, happy birthday!”

Well, it looked like someone owed him ten bucks.

“We’re sorry,” Rory said. “We told him it was a bad idea to just turn up like this, but--” 

“But you got wind of our 0-8-4 and thought you’d come check it out. Right, Doc?” Clint said, folding his arms. 

A man who beat around in a space ship/time machine was never _just in the neighborhood_ for someone’s birthday. That was the sort of thing the Doctor either did deliberately, or didn’t bother with at all.

“What? 0-8-4? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the Doctor said. “Like I said, we’re here for your birthday. The big. . .forty-two?”

Clint glared. “Try thirty-one, Doc.”

“Ah, well, yes. That would have been my next guess.” The Doctor looked around as Amy gave him a disciplinary poke in the back. “What? I’m nine hundred and twelve. Guessing human ages is harder than you might think. The point is _happy birthday._ And, now that you mention it, we did pick up some very interesting readings in the neighborhood.”

Clint sighed, and his gaze caught on Amy’s. She smiled and shrugged in a _What can you do? He’s the Doctor_ manner.

“We brought you a cake?” she said.

_I need coffee. And River. I need coffee and River, now._

“You guys stay right here,” Clint said. “I’ll be back in just a second.”

*****

_If we’re going to be pulling a lot of all-nighters, I need to find a way to make decent tea,_ River thought. The mess trailer didn’t really have anything that was up to par. One of the cooks on duty, trying to be helpful, had handed her a cup of Lipton while they packed up some cold, portable food for her to take back to the tent.

River was sipping it out of politeness and trying not to grimace. She leaned against the side of the mess trailer watching the morning stirrings in the camp. A place like this didn’t shut down for the night, of course, but they were just coming up on shift change time, so the amount of coming and going was picking up. 

Therefore, River didn’t think anything of the footsteps approaching from the far corner of the mess trailer until she heard the voice that came with them.

“River?”

“Clint?” River pushed herself away from the trailer, frowning as she moved in the direction of Clint’s voice. “What are you doing? I told you I’d bring you--”

She broke off when she saw Clint.

“Why the hell are you covered in confetti?”

Clint sighed deeply and crooked his finger.

“You’d better come with me. We have company.”

*****

Coulson felt like he had just dropped off to sleep when he was awakened by someone shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see Clint standing over him holding a large cup of coffee and wearing an _I am about to completely fuck up your morning_ look on his face.

“What?” Coulson asked blearily, pushing himself up on his elbows. 

Clint handed over the cup of coffee.

“Better drink up,” Clint said. “The Doctor’s making a house call.”

Coulson took just enough time to down half of the coffee in one swallow and pull on his sneakers.

River had already escorted the Doctor, Amy, and Rory over to the tower. When Amy saw Coulson, she nudged Rory.

“Oh, my God. Sweatpants. Rory, he’s wearing sweatpants.”

“Good morning, Amy,” Coulson said tolerantly.

At one point in the distant past, Coulson would have blamed River’s smart-ass tendencies on Clint’s influence. Over the last couple of years he’d come to learn that they were, in fact, genetic.

“Doctor,” Coulson added to the man who was crouched down by the 0-8-4, “I don’t remember calling you in on this.”

“Oh, Phil. What would be the fun in always knowing when I’m going to turn up?” The Doctor was carefully running his hand over it hammer like it was a skittish animal that might turn around and nip at his fingers unexpectedly. “Hello, you,” he said to it. “You are a long way from home, aren’t you?”

“You two are acquainted?” Coulson asked. 

“In a manner of speaking.” The Doctor straightened up. “And it should most definitely not be here.”

“So, what is it?” Coulson asked.

“It’s exactly what it looks like. A hammer.”

“A hammer from Asgard,” Clint said.

The Doctor beamed. “Oh, you lot are getting quick to catch on.”

*****

Simmons discreetly smothered a yawn as she made her way across the camp toward the mess trailer for breakfast. After all of the excitement last night it had taken a long time for to wind down enough to sleep.

They’d been invaded. Things like this just didn’t happen in the lab.

Navigating through a field camp wasn’t quite as easy as it seemed it should be. There was simply so much packed into one relatively small area. And, while SHIELD tried to keep the layout orderly, there was a certain amount of catch-as-catch can to the organization. Simmons sighed when she realized that she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and reached a dead-end in a section of tents. 

“Oh, dear.”

There was no mess trailer here, just a stack of crates covered in tarpaulins. Simmons was about to turn back when something caught her eye. Something large and blue.

Curious, she rounded the stack of crates.

“What in the world?”

It was a police box, an honest-to-goodness English police box. Here? In the middle of New Mexico? Was this meant for urban camouflage of some sort? Because if so, Simmons was sorry to say, someone had fallen down on the job.

She circled it, trailing her hand along the blue-painted wood, until she came to the door. Curious to see what sort of equipment SHIELD might have hidden on the interior, Simmons pushed the door open a crack and peeked inside.

She quickly jerked it closed again.

_Oh, my Lord. Oh. My. Lord._

She had to find Fitz.

*****

The Doctor walked in a slow circle around the hammer. The last time he had seen this, it had been on a tour of Odin’s vaults beneath the palace on Asgard. This wasn’t the sort of object that just got up and walked away. So, why in the world was it here?

His audience was waiting expectantly. The Doctor knew that he was going to need to fill in some background.

“Imagine, if you will, Earth a thousand years or so in the past,” the Doctor said. “Well, you really don’t have to imagine, because you’ve all been there from time to time. But imagine the people there, going about their human lives. They didn’t have quite as many fancy inventions as you do now, but they were much, much smarter than you lot in one respect. They _knew_ they weren’t alone in the universe.”

“You’re bucking for a gig on that Ancient Aliens show, aren’t you?” Amy said.

“Shut up,” the Doctor replied. “The fact is, as you well know by now, aliens have been popping around for tea on this planet for millennia, but humanity, as a collective, somehow manages to forget this. They remember powerful beings and incredible shenanigans, but they don’t connect them to aliens. Humans remember them as something else.”

“Yeah, we’ve actually already figured this out,” Clint said. “Asgardians are aliens who visited Earth at some point in the past and people turned them into Norse gods. You don’t have to explain that part.”

The Doctor gave him a withering look. “I like doing the explainy parts.”

Really, he was _brilliant_ at the explainy parts.

“Okay, explain this part,” Coulson said. “Asgard. Is this world a danger to us?”

“To Earth?” The Doctor was actually a bit taken aback by the question. “Of course not. Asgard is quite fond of Earth. Well Midgard. They call it Midgard. The Asgardians consider themselves the Guardians of the Nine Realms, which include this planet. They’re a bit limited in scope, I grant you, but they take that rather seriously. Asgard ran at least one nasty batch of invaders off Earth in days gone by.”

“What about now?” River said. “We haven’t seen any indications before that these people are visiting Earth, and if anyone is going to know about it, it’s going to be SHIELD.”

“Well, no, they chose to stop coming ‘round some time ago,” the Doctor said. 

“Why?” Rory asked. “If they’re so fond of Earth, why would they stop coming? You’re fond of Earth and you practically live here.”

“Well, they considered Earth a bit too. . .primitive to maintain contact with. Underdeveloped. Uncivilized. You know, now that I think on it, _fond_ might not be exactly the right word, but they certainly aren’t hostile toward you. They simply chose to take a step back.” Quite probably for the best, in the Doctor’s opinion. Being revered as a god could go to a person’s head. “King Odin decreed Midgard off limits to all Asgardians.”

“Well, at least one of them is in violation of that decree,” River said. She was fiddling with her phone. “I don’t suppose you know this man, do you? We’re all but certain that he and the hammer arrived together.”

She handed her phone to the Doctor. He studied the picture she’d pulled up. The man seemed youngish and was quite fair with a beard and piercing blue eyes. There were aspects of his face that struck the Doctor as familiar, though the entire package did not.

“I don’t suppose you have a name?” the Doctor asked.

“He wasn’t very talkative while we had him here,” Coulson said. “There was a local incident involving this man, though, in which he gave his name as Thor.”

“Thor? Really?” the Doctor said. He took a closer look at the man’s picture.

Could it be? If so, it had been a considerably long time since the Doctor had set eyes on this face, especially counting in Asgardian years. It could be a coincidence, of course, but _Thor_ was not a particularly common name on that world. It might also explain the presence of Mjolnir. The hammer was, after all, the property of the royal family.

“That name means something to you?” Coulson asked. 

“I knew a Thor,” the Doctor said, “but he was just a boy the last time I saw him.”

“Let me guess. You were just gone five minutes?” Amy said a bit dryly.

The Doctor made a face at her. “Things came up. I always meant to get back, but. . .” The Doctor held the phone a bit closer to his nose. “It could be him, I suppose. Possibly. If he is the Thor I knew, that raises a whole new realm of questions.”

“Why?” Clint asked.

“Because the Thor I knew is Odin’s elder son. The crown prince of Asgard.”

River, Clint, and Coulson exchanged a look. 

“So not only alien, alien royalty? That strikes me as a potential recipe for disaster,” River said grimly.

“Assuming that it’s really who the Doctor thinks it is,” Rory said. “Even he’s not sure. Right, Doctor?”

“No, I’m not,” the Doctor said, handing the phone back to River. “But there’s one way to find out. Where is he now?”

“He’s made some friends in Puente Antiguo,” Coulson said. “We let him out of here last night on a long leash, so we know he’s still with them. They’re under surveillance now.”

“Good. That will make them easy to find.” The Doctor rose. “Ponds, SHIELD, come along.”

*****

It took a frustratingly long time to get Fitz away from the morning bustle in the lab without raising questions, but Simmons finally succeeded in dragging him off toward the tents under the guise of running an errand for Agent Franko.

“It’s right back this way,” she said, pulling him along by the arm.

“An old-timey police box,” Fitz said, “with a giant room inside of it.”

The _you must be joking_ was heavily implied, but Simmons elected to ignore it.

“It’s amazing, Fitz. You have to see it. It defies every law of physics imaginable.”

“Are you sure you haven’t spent too much time in the sun?”

“Time in the sun? It’s barely past dawn. Now, come on. It’s right over. . .”

“Right over where?” Fitz asked.

Simmons frowned at the pile of crates covered in olive green. 

“It’s gone,” she said. “But I swear, it was right here. A blue Mackenzie Trench-style police box. I couldn’t have mistaken it for anything else.”

“And it was bigger on the inside?”

“Much, much bigger.” Fitz was eyeing her like her sanity had gone a bit off the rails. “I know I saw it.”

“Okay. I believe you,” he said. “I mean, we have an immovable hammer from space, so why not? But it seems to be gone now.”

“Gone where, though?” Simmons said. “That’s the real question.”


	4. Chapter 4

The TARDIS landed in the parking lot of the Kearny’s Bar. The establishment wouldn’t be opening until at least lunchtime, meaning no one was around to see a small blue box materialize out of thin air and promptly disgorge six people.

 _Probably for the best, that,_ River thought. Any more mysterious occurrences and the little town might spontaneously combust.

“Is this what they call Americana?” Rory said, looking around.

“Which way?” the Doctor asked.

Coulson was still tugging his jacket and tie into place. He left off and touched a finger to his earpiece. “Smith? Do you have eyes on the subject?” he asked.

Smith’s reply came back promptly, but so staticy and garbled that it was intelligible. 

“Repeat, Smith? We didn’t get that,” Coulson said.

“Sorry, sir.” Smith’s voice came through clearly this time. “We’ve been getting interference off and on all morning. They’re all at Foster’s lab.”

“It’s this way,” River said, leading their party down the street.

The glass doors of Foster’s lab were open to the early morning breeze. She and her team were sitting down to breakfast in the corner kitchenette when Strike Team Delta and the Doctor and his companions arrived. Foster’s eyes immediately landed on Coulson and she gaped for a moment before jumping up from the table.

“Oh, no,” she said, marching towards them. “I don’t know what you and your government goons want this time, but you can officially go straight to--”

“Dr. Foster.” Coulson held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “I know that we didn’t get off on the right foot, but we don’t want anything. We’re here off the record. We think we have someone here who knows your new friend.”

Darcy Lewis and Selvig had followed along behind Foster, as had Thor. He was hanging a bit to the back and, River noted, was looking curiously at the Doctor. The Time Lord seemed to decide that it was time to cut through the social niceties and stepped forward, bypassing Foster.

“If you are who I suspect you might be,” he said, holding a hand out to the large man, “you might recognize me. Though, on the other hand, if you are who I suspect you might be, then it’s been a while.”

Thor reached out slowly and clasped the Doctor’s hand.

“Doctor?” he said. When the Doctor beamed, a wide smile spread across the man’s face in turn. _“DOCTOR!”_

“I had a notion that might be— _OOOF!”_

The Doctor was cut off by a bear hug that lifted him off the ground. It looked to River like he was having the breath squeezed out of him, but he was returning the embrace as gamely as he could. Foster, Selvig, and Darcy were looking on, slightly open-mouthed.

“Okay. I didn’t quite see that coming,” River murmured.

She saw Clint cast a sidelong look at her. “Seriously? Because I did,” he said.

Thor eventually set the Doctor back on his feet, at which point real introductions could finally be made.

“These are my traveling companions, Amelia Pond and Rory Williams,” the Doctor said. “And these are our friends, Phil Coulson, River Song, and Clint Barton. They’re SHIELD. They’re. . .” The Doctor fumbled for words for a second. “They’re warriors, defenders of this world. They’re good people.”

River thought she heard Foster snort, but let it pass. Like Coulson had said, SHIELD hadn’t exactly gotten off on the right foot with these people.

The Doctor’s words did seem to resonate with Thor, at least.

“Son of Coul.” Thor clasped Coulson’s hand in greeting, and River gave her S.O. serious credit for not wincing at the grip. “I know that the Doctor does not claim people as his friends lightly. You must all be worthy indeed to fight alongside him.”

“Most worthily worthy,” the Doctor said. “And who are these fine folks?”

“These are my friends,” Thor said. “Jane Foster, Eric Selvig, and Darcy Lewis. They’ve helped me since I arrived here. They’ve been most kind.”

“So. . .” Darcy Lewis tentatively raised her hand in the air. She was looking at the Doctor. “Does that mean you’re an alien? It does, doesn’t it?”

“The Doctor is of Gallifrey,” Thor said, clasping the Doctor’s shoulder. “He is the last of the Time Lords, an ancient and powerful race. His name is known across the universe. He was once a frequent visitor to my father’s court on Asgard.”

“Yes, back when this one was just a boy. And considerably shorter,” the Doctor said, clapping the other man on the back. “Thor Odinson. You wouldn’t believe the mischief he and his little brother could get up to. Where _is_ Loki? Is he here with you?”

River saw Thor’s face fall.

“No, I am here alone,” he said.

“Why?” the Doctor asked. “And why is the Mjolnir here? The last time I saw that it was stored away in the palace vaults. Waiting for you to come of age, as I recall.”

It was strange to watch such a giant of a man seem to shrink.

“I must tell you, the reason I am here shames me greatly,” he said.

“Then why don’t you tell us?” Coulson replied. “Maybe there’s some way we can help.”

*****

“You know,” Clint said, “I’ve heard of fucked up families where parents kick their kids out of the house. But kicking them to another planet?”

He, Coulson, and River had wandered outside for a little air and for some privacy to talk. They had a lot more intel to go on now, but still no real course of action. They had a stranded alien prince and an immovable weapon on their hands.

“If Mjolnir is as important as both Thor and the Doctor made out, I can’t imagine that Odin dropped it here without a recovery plan,” River said. “Thor, either, for that matter. If I had to guess, I’d say this banishment always had an end date, probably once Odin determined that his son had learned his lesson. Of course, if Odin really is dead now. . .”

“Then they could be our problem indefinitely,” Coulson said. “But if the King of Asgard is dead, _someone_ has to be in charge, I presume. Either the queen or this brother, Loki. The Doctor knows these people. Maybe he can negotiate with them, get them to take Thor back.”

“So, just to be clear,” Clint said, “we’re betting all of our chips on the Doctor’s diplomatic skills?”

“He has his moments,” Coulson said. 

Clint opened his mouth to reply when his comm started buzzing dully in his ear, quickly sliding up the scale into sharp shriek. 

_“Fuck!”_ Clint quickly popped out the device. River and Coulson were doing the same. “What the hell is up with--”

River grasped his arm. “Boys?” she said. She pointed upward.

A spiral of dark clouds had appeared out of nowhere in the clear blue sky. Clint could feel the shift in the atmosphere, a sudden pressure that seemed to mute all sound around them before a huge beam of light touched down in the middle of the street.

*****

Coulson was starting to think that Asgard’s “hands off” rule regarding Earth wasn’t worth the paper it may or may not be printed on. Suddenly they were up to their eyebrows in Asgardians. It seemed that Thor had friends back home, and Lady Sif, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg weren’t taking his banishment laying down.

“You know,” Clint said, eyeing the compliment of swords and daggers the newcomers were armed with, “I’m suddenly feeling much less out of place.”

The Asgardian warriors came bearing good news and bad news. Thor’s father was not, in fact, dead.

The bad news was that his beloved brother was plotting against him. At least, that’s what Thor’s comrades-in-arms highly suspected.

The Doctor and Thor responded to this with unison disbelief.

“Loki?”

“Oh, that can’t be right.”

“He would never betray me so.”

“There must be a mistake.”

Lady Sif was adamant. “He means to take the throne for himself,” she insisted. “With you banished to Midgard and the All-Father in the Odinsleep, there’s no one to stand in his way.”

Coulson saw the Doctor open his mouth to argue, and raised his hands for quiet.

“Look,” he said, “if it’s true that Thor’s brother engineered this whole thing to stage a coup then we need to prepare for the worst.”

“The worst?” Amy asked. “A bit overly dramatic, don’t you think. What worst?”

“He means that if Loki finds out that we are here with Thor and that we mean to unveil his treachery, he will retaliate,” Lady Sif said. “The only way he’ll have to protect himself is eliminate all those who know of his plans.”

“Exactly,” Coulson said. _And somehow I don’t trust you people to worry about the collateral damage._ “What we need is a little time to try to diffuse this situation peacefully.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get it,” Foster said. 

Coulson felt the air press flat again as another portal opened overhead.

*****

_“Diffuse the situation peacefully.”_ Rory coughed on a lungful of smoke. “I like that plan. Why does it hardly ever work?”

Instead they were in the middle of a pitched battle against a giant metal automaton, and Rory’s hand itched for the hilt of a sword that he hadn’t worn in a very, very long time.

 _There’s not going to be anything left of this place,_ Rory thought as he and Amy took cover behind a car.

“I don’t know.” Amy lifted herself up slightly to peer through the car’s windows. “That thing’s coming back this way. We need to move.”

That was really all they could do, stay out of the way and try to steer as many panicked townsfolk to safety as possible. Through the chaos that had enveloped the town, Rory could see that Dr. Foster and her people were doing the same. The four Asgardian warriors were trying to fight the giant robot head-on.

Their SHIELD friends might not have alien superpowers, but they were getting some hits in, too. At one point, Rory spotted River, Clint, and Coulson feverishly working on a large pick-up truck that was parked along the street, both doors open and the hood popped. He would have loved to have stopped to ask them what the hell they were doing, but he was too busy trying to outrun flying debris. 

A few moments later he saw the same truck rolling, driverless, down the street. It hit the robot, exploding into a fireball on impact.

“Car bomb. Clever,” Amy said.

Rory nodded. A pity it didn’t seem to have any discernible effect. 

Amy was considerably less calm a few moments later when the robot stomped past their position and they saw a familiar figure clinging to the back of the thing’s neck.

“What is he _doing?”_ Amy asked.

“Playing to his strengths?” Rory replied. 

The Doctor was holding on with one hand while with the other he was aiming his sonic screwdriver at the robot, trying to reprogram it, Rory assumed. That was one of the things the Doctor did best—hacking technology. The robot wasn’t being cooperative, though, and even Rory gasped in horror when it reached around, grabbed the Doctor, and flung him off.

Fortunately, Time Lords were a hardy species, even without regeneration. When Rory and Amy reached the Doctor he was coughing and looked dazed, but was already struggling to sit up.

“Well, it didn’t take too kindly to that,” the Doctor said as Rory and Amy helped him to his feet.

“You’re out of your mind. You know that, yeah?” Amy said, sounding as if she was a hairsbreadth away from smacking him. 

The Doctor didn’t seem to hear her. He was staring up the street. “Oh, no.”

For a moment, it seemed that the whole town had gone extremely quiet. Rory turned to see that the robot had stopped in the middle of the street.

Thor was standing right in its path.

That was as much as Rory had time to register before the robot struck the man down.

*****

Back at the camp, Simmons had just leaned over the hammer to take some additional readings when something remarkable happened.

The hammer wobbled. 

“Fitz! Fitz, look at this.”

“What is. . .oh!” Fitz said as the hammer shuddered again.

Simmons looked at her friend. “What should we do? Should we--”

“Get clear!” Fitz said, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her away just as the hammer launched itself into the air.

*****

River’s internal clock told her that she’d missed the last one minute and nine seconds of the battle.

There had been noise and chaos, both in abundance. Then. . .then they’d thought Thor had been killed, but just for a moment. That part was incredibly confusing. Then something had blown her through the air. Then there had been that one minute and nine seconds of fog. 

Now a frantic-looking Clint was bending over her.

“I’m fine,” River croaked automatically before he could even ask.

“Shit, you scared me.” Clint’s face downgraded from _frantic_ to simply _worried._ He put a restraining hand on her shoulder when she tried to sit up. “Hold up. Head injury? How bad?”

River laid still, taking stock. Her head did hurt, but no more than the rest of her currently did.

“That depends,” she said. “Did I really see Thor come back to life, catch our flying 0-8-4, and then spontaneously sprout armor and a cape?”

“You did.”

“In that case, my head is fine.” Clint let her sit up this time. “Bloody hell,” she said, looking at what was left of Puente Antiguo.

There were people milling about amid the smoking shells of buildings, overturned cars, and what looked like pieces of the robot. River looked for familiar faces, and found Coulson quickly. He seemed to catch sight of her and Clint at the same time and headed for their position. Smith and Jones were following on his heels.

“Is everyone all right?” River said, climbing to her feet, holding onto Clint to steady herself.

“We’re still assessing the damage,” Coulson said. “All SHIELD personnel are accounted for, now that I’ve found you two. Foster and her people are fine. I haven’t seen the Doctor, Amy, and Rory.”

“Sir?” Smith said. “Do those people have something to do with a blue box?” At Coulson’s affirmative nod, Smith exchanged a look with Jones, who shrugged slightly. “This is going to sound insane, but we saw two men and a woman go into a blue box in the bar parking lot and the box. . .well, sir, it disappeared.”

Coulson raised an eyebrow at River. River raised one right back. “God knows,” she said.

It was anyone’s guess where the Doctor had gone or why he’d snuck out right at the conclusion of the fight. Presumably he’d tell them at some point. Or not.

“Our Asgardians are gone, too,” Coulson said. “Back to where they came from, I assume, and the 0-8-4 along with them.”

 _Leaving us to deal with the mess,_ River thought, looking around at the destruction.

“What do we do now?” Clint asked.

*****

The answer to Clint’s question was _pack up and go home._ They were still short on explanations, but with the 0-8-4 no longer in play, SHIELD’s work in New Mexico was concluded. The science team was somewhat placated by the robot scrap they were able to salvage from town. Aside from that, there was nothing left to do but break up camp.

Coulson was watching the tower being taken down when he heard a familiar pulsing wheeze. Work came to a standstill as the TARDIS materialized ten feet to his left and the Doctor, Amy, and Rory stepped out.

“As you were,” Coulson said to the assembled personnel. Most of them were boggling. He saw Agent Simmons grab Agent Fitz’s arm and point excitedly. At a stern look from Coulson they quickly hurried back to work.

“You guys disappeared on us,” he said. “What happened?”

“We followed the others back to Asgard,” Amy said. “The Doctor wanted to see what was going on.”

Amy cast a concerned look over her shoulder at the Doctor. Coulson didn’t think he’d ever seen the Time Lord look quite so subdued. His shoulders were slumped and he was looking at the ground.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Rory said. “Is there somewhere. . .?”

“I’ll round up Clint and River,” Coulson said. “I know they’ll want to hear this, too.”

The debriefing took place among packing crates and over plates of cake. Not knowing what else to do with a birthday cake that was literally big enough to feed an army, Clint and Coulson had carried it over to the Command Center so that people could help themselves as they worked.

The Doctor was still being uncharacteristically quiet. He sat beside Coulson on a crate, poking at his slice of cake. Amy and Rory tag-teamed on explaining what had happened on Asgard. 

“Loki was trying to use the Bifrost, the transporter thingy, to destroy one of the other words. Jotenheim, I think?” Rory said.

“That was it,” Amy said. “So, Thor blew the whole thing up. The Bifrost, not Jotenheim.”

“Oh, and Odin’s fine now. I never got a good idea of what was wrong with him in the first place, but he’s back in charge again,” Rory added.

“And he’s welcomed Thor back with open arms.” Amy twirled her fork in the air. “Apparently sacrificing himself to stop that robot proved that he was _worthy,_ or some such. Anyway, it’s all happy families on Asgard again. Well, except for. . .”

“Loki,” Clint said. “He’s definitely dead?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Rory said. “He fell right off the edge of the. . .well, the planet, I guess. It’s kind of hard to describe. But, yeah, the family seemed to think he was done for. Right, Doctor?”

The Doctor glanced up from his piece of cake, which resembled nothing so much as a pile of crumbs and frosting. 

“He fell into the Void,” the Doctor said. “It amounts to the same thing, I suppose.”

“Yeah. The family was taking it pretty hard,” Amy said.

“So, no Bifrost means no more Asgardians visiting Earth?” River asked.

“At least until it’s repaired,” Rory said. “That sounded like it was going to be an undertaking, though.”

“Considering how this round went, I can’t say I’m sorry about that,” Clint said.

The conversation meandered on, and eventually so did Clint, River, Amy, and Rory. Rory was curious about the mechanics of how a camp like SHIELD’s broke down. Clint and River were happy enough to give him and Amy a tour of what was left of it. Coulson stayed put and waited until they had moved off before he glanced over at the Doctor again.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“What?” The Doctor left off his study of empty space for a moment. “Yes, of course.”

It was the same casual lie Coulson would have told in response to a general expression of concern. He certainly wasn’t expecting any real emotional unburdening on the Doctor’s part. The Time Lord played his cards close to the vest better than anyone Coulson ever met. Coulson sometimes wondered if it wasn’t just an age thing. The old man didn’t want to burden the children with his troubles.

Sometimes, though, it wasn’t about trying to get a person to share their problems. Sometimes it was just about caring enough to inquire.

“You knew Loki, didn’t you?” Coulson said. “You said you knew him and Thor both when they were kids.”

The Doctor nodded. “I did.”

“What was he like?” 

The Doctor didn’t answer immediately, or even change expression. After a moment, though, a faint smile drifted to the surface.

“He was a nice boy,” the Doctor said. “A long time ago.”

_The End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next in our series line-up, we'll take a peek at one of the Doctor's long-ago visits to Asgard in _Madness & Mischief._


End file.
